Social/Emotional Environment

We agree with William Glasser* who said, "Learning is serious, but that doesn't mean it has to be grim!"

Glasser also taught us that four needs must be met before students can learn -

The need to Belong and to Love

The need for Power

The need for Freedom

The need to have Fun

Based upon those needs, and upon the trends in society and the workforce, we must create an Emotional Environment in the classroom which supports those needs. First of all, we must develop and maintain the team. It takes intentionality and time, but it is critical to children's emotional health as well as to their learning.

Neuroscience has confirmed that our emotional states are directly related to how well we learn. Even feelings like embarrassment, boredom, or frustration -- not only fear -- can spur the brain to enter the proverbial "fight or flight" mode. The amygdala goes into overdrive and gets in the way of the parts of the brain that can store memories. "Reducing stress and establishing a positive emotional climate in the classroom is arguably the most essential component of teaching," writes Mariale Hardiman, a former teacher and administrator and current assistant dean of the Urban Schools Partnership at Johns Hopkins University's School of Education.**

Begin by Building Community

Day One - Take What You Need - this is a wonderful strategy which I always use first thing on the first day of school. It sets the tone for developing and maintaining an excellent emotional environment. Get it here on my blog post for Edutopia.

More Strategies for Building Community -

In my classroom we took time, well-spent, each day to meet as a team. We began every day with a team meeting, and the first thing we did was recite Marva Collins' Born to Win Creed, which our principal had shared with us (scroll down to view the creed) . We then randomly selected a phrase from the creed and discussed what it meant and how it related to our lives. We then took a few minutes to just talk. Students felt free to talk about anything at all; topics ranged from having spaghetti at Grandma's house last night to a trip to the county fair, to death. A little girl came to school one day; her dad had died suddenly during the night of an epileptic seizure - her mother expected her to stay home that day, but she wanted to be with us! She asked me to tell the class what had happened. That was a very powerful testimony to the team we had created and continually nurtured in our classroom.

Another teacher and I also sought other ways to develop the team and to develop our relationships with our students. We began having lunch with the students in the classroom every Friday. We ordered personal pan pizzas, which were delivered to our classroom. We ate, talked, drew pictures and watched music videos - we were just "together". The results were amazing; it took our relationship to entirely new levels. Student motivation and achievement increased. Behavior problems all but vanished. (Anyone can have a bad day.)

Our Emotional Environment was characterized by Respect, Caring, Acceptance, Trust, High Expectations, Belief in each other, Joy and Fun.

If our students are to go into the world of work as self-directed entrepreneurs, with their own company, as a freelancer, or within another company, they must have self-confidence, they must be emotionally literate, and they must be skilled in collaboration and teamwork.

In order to help our students develop these skills we must provide appropriate, intentionally designed context and structures. It takes just a few weeks at the beginning of the school year for students to understand the concepts of being self-directed, and of truly working independently and interdependently. We teach students specific strategies which they can utilize, and then we support them with an intentionally designed context and structure via the physical environment and via the curriculum and instruction . . .

Teach Strategies First

Just because we decide that students should work well together doesn't mean they will know how to do this. We must begin by teaching them specific strategies and outlining our expectations. While it does require dedicating some time to this, you will find that it was well worth the investment. Teachers claim that they just do not have time for teaching these strategies. We understand that many school schedules are a major obstacle. Many students spend their days rushing from one 45-minute class to the next - 8 times a day! Teachers feel pressured to make every second count. The truth is, we do not have the time to not teach these strategies, as they will result in an enormous increase in productivity and time spent focused on learning. Once students have the strategies, are self-directed and engaged the former time-wasters of having to give directions, continually direct students back to the task at hand and dealing with various disruptions - are gone!

In addition to providing students with some specific strategies for how to work collaboratively, we also provide them with the strategies they need to be self-directed, independent and interdependent. We also teach the students many Thinking Tools which they will utilize on a daily basis.

Once students have these strategies and tools, and once they have become engaged in a well-designed PBL21 curriculum, just make sure they have what they need, provide support and then get out of their way!

The Curriculum and the Emotional Environment/Context

The two main reasons students drop out of school are:

1. School is boring.

2. School is irrelevant to their lives.

Students in the 21st century will not be engaged in a curriculum that is textbook-driven, delivered to them in a classroom that is teacher-centered. When students are engaged - they are learning. When students are not engaged, they are not learning. And this is what creates behavioral problems, from absenteeism to disruptive behavior in the classroom. Obviously, there are also a myriad of other factors which affect behavior, but an engaging curriculum can overcome many of those.

If you want students who are engaged, students who are learning, then you need to design and implement a 21st century learning experience. This means a curriculum that is based upon the 3 R's - Relevant, Rigorous and Real World!

PBL21 is a method of designing a curriculum that takes project-based learning to the next level. It is "the next step in the evolution of project-based learning." PBL21 curriculum is designed based upon our 3 Compasses - the Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education, theMultiple Literacies for the 21st Century and the 7 Survival Skills for the 21st Century (Tony Wagner, Harvard University). View compasses here.

The proper emotional environment provides the support and context for PBL21. Together, these will meet the needs identified by Glasser:

1. Need to Belong and to Love - beginning each day by taking a few minutes to say the creed, discuss one idea from the creed and having a bit of a sharing/discussion goes a long way to meeting the need for belonging and love.

This need is supported by the PBL21 curriculum by providing the context for students to belong to a variety of teams or partnerships. For example, Literature Circles, Expert and Jigsaw Groups, tutoring younger students and engaging in collaborative projects and research.

2. The Need for Power - first of all, giving students a voice and choice is also giving them power. If the first thing you do every day in your classroom is recite the creed and then discuss one line from it, you are giving students voice. You can allow them to select the line from the creed they want to discuss each day. Giving students an opportunity to share something is another way of giving them voice, thus meeting a need for power.

Glasser's theory states that Power is fulfilled by achieving, accomplishing and being recognized and respected**. When teachers maintain high expectations and provide support - students will meet them. Students can and will do a great deal more than many teachers, parents or even the students themselves realize. It is our job to help them discover and build their capacities as learners by maintaining very high expectations - for all students. These must of course be differentiated; remember Vygotsky's ZPD - the Zone of Proximal Development. Informally stated, it means that we push each student to strive for the next level, starting with where that student is today.

High Expectations + Support = High Achievement . . . which leads to personal power.

3. The Need for Freedom - Allowing students as much choice as possible will fulfill a need for freedom. In morning meetings, it is each student's choice to add to the sharing/discussion. It is each student's choice to decide what to share.

In the PBL21 curriculum students can be offered many opportunities to make choices:

Literature - Students can choose novel to read for personal reading or for joining a Literature Circle. We selected many novels and ordered classroom sets for each title. I usually selected 3 different novels to read which complemented the theme of the PBL21 unit we were working on at the time. I gave a quick little "booktalk" about each novel, then the students self-selected which book they wanted to read. Thus, the Literature Circles were formed.

Individual Research - Students selected a topic for their individual research report (within the theme/context of the overall PBL21 unit). I usually gave my students a list of possible topics to choose from. I also offered to let them recommend a different topic based upon their own ideas and interests; I just asked them to run it by me first. Not only did this always work out, I found that students came up with many wonderful topics for their personal research which would not have occurred to me.

Performance-Based Assessment - Within PBL21 there are assessments for small groups as well as for individuals. Whether the assessment/product is created by a group or an individual, there are options. Usually I allow students to create a product in a medium of their choice rather than dictating exactly in what format they will demonstrate what they have learned. Examples of products include short stories and poetry, debates, plays, musical performances, skits, student-produced documentaries, radio/television/film production, game design (digital or non-digital), student-organized conferences, community dinner theater productions, student film festival, designing a course and teaching it, art (paintings, sculptures, murals, etc.), service learning projects, investigating a community issue then presenting a solution to the City Council, public service announcements, and more . . . The growing plethora of Web 2.0 tools, apps and other multimedia tools allow for an enormous range of possibilities and creates a huge amount of freedom for students to demonstrate their learning, develop 21st century skills and multiple literacies.

Learning Centers - For years I thought of kindergarten or first grade classrooms when I heard the term "learning center". That was a misconception on my part! A Learning Center can be many things: a place in a classroom, a location on campus, a location in the community and/or a virtual location! No matter what the purpose of the learning center, it should offer options/choices for student activities and a variety of resources. Similarly, students should have a choice in selecting which learning centers they wish to utilize.

Self-Directed - in this case students have choices about what to do, when to do it, where to do it and how to do it. For example, in my fourth grade classroom we started each day with our Rug Talk (creed, discussion). Before I turned them loose to be self-directed I would take a few minutes to "brief" them. Sometimes this briefing consisted of my giving them new information or new directions, introducing a new activity or some other piece of relevant news. If I needed to introduce a new skill first then we would have a 10 to 15-minutes mini lesson. If more time was needed for this lesson we took it. Then, I may direct which Expert Groups or Literature Circles would meet immediately. All the activities for our 2 l/2 hour morning session were listed on the board. Students knew what they needed to work on during that time period, and they moved through them in a self-directed manner. It was awesome! The class could actually run itself for the most part.

Personalization and Differentiation - While students were moving through their activities for the morning I was free to meet briefly with groups, provide individual support as needed and I always met with several students per day on an individual basis to discuss their creative writing or their individual research. I kept a log on each student, for each meeting, and the next time we met we began by seeing what they had achieved or improved since the last meeting. (There are many more ways to personalize or differentiate, this is offered as but one example.)

4. The Need to Have Fun - all humans have this need! When students are engaged in rigorous, relevant and real world curriculum, designing products, presenting and performing, researching their interests - they are having fun. I can guarantee that when you implement PBL21 in your classroom your students will love school! I know this not only from personal experience as a classroom teacher, but from what other teachers have told me AND from what I have read online and in the research.